Do viewers need to be warned before watching movies and TV shows that fail to portray sexual consent?

That's according to a research poll conducted in 2022, and the basis for a national campaign to introduce consent classifications in media.

Sydney-based not-for-profit Consent Labs has launched a petition to the Classifications Board, for a '(c) lack of consent' category to be attached to media that contains scenes containing non-consensual sex acts.

"The goal is essentially for the Classifications Board to recognise the importance of a lack of consent classification, and so this would sit alongside existing classifications such as nudity, coarse language violence," said campaign co-founder and executive director Dr Joyce Yu.

Having the classification on media, Dr Yu said, will help the audience to be more critically aware of what they are consuming, and the ways in which the on-screen behaviours do not accurately reflect social norms.

"I think it should take the same format as current classification [so] before you're watching a movie, [you] see all the classifications come up and so that the viewer can just be informed and might even think, 'oh, I wonder where that scene is'," Dr Yu said.

"Or after finishing the TV show and maybe saying, 'OK, I can kind of recognise that maybe it was this scene that meant that it was classified in that kind of way'."

Dr Yu co-founded Consent Labs back in 2016, to highlight the importance of consent education in high schools and universities.

She told ACM the consent classification campaign has snowballed since the federal government announced its intentions to introduce a national consent curriculum in schools from 2023.

"I think that there's a lot of action surrounding this, which is really great," Dr Yu said.

"But the reason why we think that this campaign sort of adds to all of this momentum is we did our own research, and what that shows is that three-in-five Australians still can't recognise what consent looks like on their screens.

"A quarter can't actually define what consent is, so that education piece is still very much missing. And we think that everybody watches TV and movies and it's just a great opportunity to really sort of be it show that it is important to be able to recognise when consent is done well and that communication is done well on screens and that we should really be celebrating and championing that."

Non-consensual acts on-screen are often portrayed as funny, romantic, or charming, Dr Yu said, which helps to normalise the behaviour.

"I think it's important to think about when we see reflections of particularly relationships on screen, how that can impact young people," Dr Yu said.

"We should be encouraging conversations between two characters where they're checking in constantly and making sure that both parties are comfortable and able to voice if they're not comfortable.

"So I think that you know, yes, there are elements of Hollywood that you can definitely say do not reflect reality, but it plays a huge role on how people perceive relationships and model [...] relationships."

Since starting the campaign Dr Yu has began to cast a more critical eye on some of her own favourite TV shows and movies.

She told ACM it's "a bit heartbreaking", but the experience has led to some necessary conversations.

"Some of my favourite TV shows and movies have scenes that are very questionable or the characters that we all know and love, they don't have examples of asking for consent," Dr Yu said.

"We all have shows and movies that we really love that do not have great examples of consent and respect in sort of those interactions. But we're not trying to cancel any TV shows or movies.

"We're just trying to highlight that it shows how normalised this kind of behaviour is."

But the situation is also changing, with more and more films and shows committing to better portray consent on-screen.

"[It] just makes me really happy when I see good examples where people do ask for consent," Dr Yu said.

"I think that's another reason why this campaign is so important because I think it has a direct correlation that newer TV shows are actually showcasing good examples of asking for consent because in society it's now becoming a more important and acknowledged issue."

In the hopes of making the classification a reality, Consent Labs is aiming to attract 200,000 signatures to its online petition before it closes on October 27, 2022.